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A review by gerhard
Pumpkin Teeth by Tom Cardamone
3.0
Eclectic though uneven collection of short stories from the talented author of Green Thumb, winner of the 2013 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT SF/fantasy/horror. These stories range from eroticism to whimsy to horror – often in a single story.
The standout story for me was the first one, ‘Lightning Capital’. Unfortunately its sexy joie de vivre is not replicated in the subsequent tales, which quickly descend into the disgusting (‘Bottom Feeder’) to the truly grotesque (‘Suitcase Sam’).
For me the story with the most potential was ‘Yolk’, a melancholic story about a man reborn in the body of his lover, experiencing him from the inside out, as it were.
The tone of this collection is difficult to pin down. Best described as Neil Gaiman fused with Clive Barker, it represents interstitial genre fiction at its most transgressive and transcendent.
My only gripe with this Lethe Press edition is the sloppy copy-editing. Well worth reading for fans of the offbeat and weird. Cardamone is definitely a writer to watch.
The standout story for me was the first one, ‘Lightning Capital’. Unfortunately its sexy joie de vivre is not replicated in the subsequent tales, which quickly descend into the disgusting (‘Bottom Feeder’) to the truly grotesque (‘Suitcase Sam’).
For me the story with the most potential was ‘Yolk’, a melancholic story about a man reborn in the body of his lover, experiencing him from the inside out, as it were.
The tone of this collection is difficult to pin down. Best described as Neil Gaiman fused with Clive Barker, it represents interstitial genre fiction at its most transgressive and transcendent.
My only gripe with this Lethe Press edition is the sloppy copy-editing. Well worth reading for fans of the offbeat and weird. Cardamone is definitely a writer to watch.